Getting started with NextCloud?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve tried NextCloud before and didn’t really love it and I’m now happy with a combination of syncthing and LibreOffice. But my wife wants the full google drive, with sheets, docs etc. without the google, and I think NextCloud is my best option for that.

I’m and experienced *nix admin and already have a Linux server running with both VMs and docker containers and also have a working OpenVPN setup for remote access. But I found the NextCloud setup frustrating. We had a discussion about it (here I think) and determined that this was because NextCloud would rather sell their hosted service, so they don’t go out of their way to make the self hosted option easy. I get that and don’t hold it against them at all.

But, now that I’m wanting to try it again, I’m looking for pointers to guides for setting up self hosted NextCloud. I’ve searched, but nothing I found seemed like “the one”.

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nullify3112@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I’m very happy with Nextcloud so far. I run the AIO container on an old intel MacMini. I use files and photos. None of the other stuff.

Virtual files work ok on Linux desktop but you will lose the preview capability for non local files. Be careful with photos, it can preview and download them in a lower resolution than what you saved them as.

I use Jellyfin for my music but use nextcloud to upload and maintain the library. Huge pain in the beginning when I realized some folders with residual hidden files from a MacOS file system were being skipped and not shown in Nextcloud! Other than that, works great!

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benoegen@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I am hosting a NC container in docker with collabora behind traefik. Works nice, but collabora sometimes breaks due to updates (e.g. forbidden characters). NC itself is smooth though.

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sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I found the LearnLinuxTV tutorial on installing Nextcloud to be really good, and it’s been running great! It’s excellent if you want drive and has all the different other bits like notes, calendar, forms, office, etc.

However, you might also want to look at some other services too for specific tasks. I use Radicale for calendar, mostly because it was my first self-hosted service and I never bothered moving to the NC offering, but it’s very simple to setup and works well for me. Etherpad is good if you want shareable MD notes (but isn’t as great if you want private notes, for that local programs like Joplin, Marktext, and Markor are your best bet). For image hosting, Immich is always nice and has excellent mobile clients too (even on Linux mobile, you have the third-party Mimick!)

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chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I found Nextcloud all in one pretty easy to install, and it’s been very stable and simple to keep running. Been up for about a year now.

It’s the nextcloud ux that I find kinda frustrating for a family use case. It’s got a hundred features you don’t want, and the ones you want don’t work as well as you’d expect them to. For example, calendar cannot subscribe to external calendars, which is oddly limiting. I don’t uses photos, I don’t use talk, and I don’t use it for mail, presence, messaging, or or most of the other stuff bundled into it. I use files, Collabora office, and notes. And while collabora is reasonably functional on desktop, it’s pretty bad on mobile. if she’s used to gdocs, and expects something similar, she’s probably not gonna like it.

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- GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Most of the mobile “office” use will be to view stuff that’s maintained on desktop. I hope it can handle that?
  
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  - chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah. Not as polished or functional, but it can do that.
    
    If she’s supportive of the change for the right reasons, it’ll probabky be fine. If she’s being dragged into this against her will, expect some resistance. :-)
    
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- autriyo@feddit.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’ve gotten the calendar to subscribe to external calendars. One work related Microsoft calendar, and one for holidays.
  
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  - chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Sorry, I didn’t describe my issue properly… Nextcloud can indeed subscribe to external calendars, but read only. This requires you to use a different app/interface to modify or update events on the external calendar, and if you need two calendar apps, it’s not a particularly useful solution IMO. There are other calendars without this limitation (in fact I think every other calendar I’ve used recently). It’s possible that I’m wrong, but it does say right in the Nextcloud interface that it’s read only. If there’s a way around this limitation, I’d live to hear it.
    
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AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I feel like I’ve never heard anything but complaints about the all-in-one image.

On the other hand, I’ve been using the community maintained docker image for a few years with minimal issues.

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Shabby4582@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I ran it manually installed for years in a vm, then an LXC. It broke…a lot.

Then I ran it as docker containers with MySQL for a few years. It broke…less-ish.

Then I ran the AIO container. It was (and is) quite irritating because it’s so opinionated compared to regular docker containers. However, it hasn’t broken. It works pretty well. It’s faster than my old install and the office stuff seems to work better. However…want to do something different to the way Nextcloud AIO recommends? Nah, fuck you go kludge something together. You kinda have to do stuff their way, including things like backups.

It’s annoying to have all my other compose containers work with volumes and similar settings and Nextcloud be kinda its own thing, but I’m sticking with the AIO container. Takes a while to set up, but at least the documentation can’t be accused of being sparse.

That’s been my experience anyway. I’m sure smarter people than me have managed to bend it to their will a bit more.

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rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

I use Docker Compose to run my Nextcloud server using the community image, which in turn lives inside an unprivileged LXC container.

:::spoiler compose.yaml

volumes:
  db:

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:lts
    container_name: mariadb
    restart: always
    command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --log-bin=binlog --binlog-format=ROW
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
    secrets:
      - mysql_root_password
      - mysql_nextcloud_password
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_root_password
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud

  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud:latest
    container_name: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - /var/www/html:/var/www/html
      - /srv/nextcloud:/srv
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db

secrets:
  mysql_root_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_root_password.txt
  mysql_nextcloud_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password.txt

:::

Nextcloud’s file storage is a mount point at /srv/nextcloud, which is backed by a ZRAID pool. The secrets are stored in files with 600 permissions. The web server is initially exposed on port 8080.

When you run the container for the first time, it will show a first time setup dialog. You’ll have to fill it out manually, using mariadb for the database type and db for the database hostname.

If Nextcloud works through HTTP, you can then set up a proxy for HTTPS. I used Nginx running on the same LXC. I can’t guarantee that my config is adequately secure, use it at your own risk.

:::spoiler 10-nextcloud.conf

upstream php-handler {
	server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}

server {
	listen 80;
	listen [::]:80;
	server_name nextcloud.your.domain;
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
	listen 443 ssl http2;
	listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
	server_name nextcloud.your.domain;
	keepalive_timeout 70;
	client_max_body_size 32G;

	ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl.crt;
	ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl.key;
	ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
	ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;

	add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always;
	add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
	add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always;
	add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
	add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
	add_header X-Robots-Tag "none" always;
	add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;

	fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;

	location / {
		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
	}
}

:::

To allow the web app to work using the DNS name, you’ll have to edit /var/www/html/config/config.php and change/add these values:

:::spoiler config.php (partial)

'trusted_domains' => array(
    0 => '127.0.0.1:8080',
    1 => 'nextcloud.your.domain',
    // 2 => whatever other addresses you want to use
),
'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://nextcloud.your.domain/',
'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',
'overwritehost' => 'nextcloud.ng.local'

:::

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The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu@infosec.pub ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I run nextcloud in a podman pod because I’m coocoo bananas that way. It uses authentik as an SSO provider using the nextcloud OIDC plugin. And I use the linuxserver.io container rather than the official nextcloud one because gosh darn it , it actually works

[Pod]
PodName=nextcloud
PublishPort=10443:443
PublishPort=9980:9980

Nextcloud-db.container

Description=db
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
Pod=nextcloud.pod
ContainerName=nextcloud-db
Image=docker.io/library/mariadb:11
AutoUpdate=registry
Volume=nextcloud-db.volume:/var/lib/mysql:Z
Environment=MARIADB_HOST=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_DATABASE=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_USER=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_PASSWORD=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=nextcloud

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Nextcloud-app.container

[Unit]
Description=Nextcloud
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
#Label=app=nextcloud
ContainerName=nextcloud-app
Pod=nextcloud.pod
Image=lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
Volume=nextcloud-config.volume:/config:Z
#Volume=nextcloud-data.volume:/data:Z
Volume=/home/nextcloud/:/data:Z
Environment=TZ=America/New_York
Environment=PUID=1000
Environment=PGID=1000
#PublishPort=10443:443

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Nextcloud-office.container

[Unit]
Description=Nextcloud-office
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
#Label=app=nextcloud
ContainerName=nextcloud-office
Pod=nextcloud.pod
Image=docker.io/collabora/code:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
Environment=server_name=office.app.myserver.org
Environment=aliasgroup1="https://nextcloud.app.myserver.org/"
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

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pmk@piefed.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Always nice to see podman used well! Do you have a dedicated user or is it rootful?

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- The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu@infosec.pub ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  many of the linuxserver containers don’t work rootless. i didn’t have luck when i tried it as a user service
  
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cenzorrll@piefed.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nextcloud has worked wonderfully for pretty much everything except for the office suite, which almost never works, I’ve heard AIO runs it fine. I’ve just had more useful luck with collabora on my phone and libreoffice on desktop that I’m not willing to fuss about to try and get it to work for the fifth time just for it to break again.

As for installation, I went the nextcloudpi route on a normal PC and haven’t really had any issues that weren’t my own fault. The biggest struggle I had was figuring out what packages I needed to install on a minimal Debian install before I could successfully run the installer.

I did spin up a nextcloudpi lxc container on proxmox since I’m expecting to containerize it in the future and it just started up perfectly along with the normal office suite issues.

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- Luckyfriend222@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Install and run EuroOffice. Integrates with Nextcloud. Based off OnlyOffice. Works really well.
  
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  - Lazarus@mastodon.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    @Luckyfriend222 @cenzorrll Is Euro Office ready and officially released now or still in semi-beta state ? Do you know of any simple tutorial to hook it up to an existing nextcloud stack ?
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Damage@feddit.it ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nextcloud AIO container runs pretty much without fuss on my VPS, but I don’t use the office features, just file syncing/sharing, contacts and calendar

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phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
J love next cloud with onlyoffice but man, onlyoffice is a huge pain in the ass to get it working stable with next cloud.

It was a pain in the ass when I set that up 10 or so years ago, and it still is today. I just set it up a few weeks ago, took me days with all the problems I had and a single reboot later again it’s broken

I think only office is probably the best web based office suite out there but they seriously need to look into fixing this connection crap

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T4V0@lemmy.pt ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
From what I’ve gathered about Nextcloud, they seem to be a fast paced rolling release model, which breaks often due to their pace.

Since I didn’t want to handhold it constantly, their forks drew my attention, OwnCloud and OpenCloud — fork from OwnCloud infinitescale — I went with OpenCloud, due to the smaller footprint required.

I’m currently using systemd container services built from the “full” docker compose version. The services I’m hosting are: OpenCloud server, Caddy as a reverse proxy and automatic cert renew, Keycloak for IDM, Collabora office, Apache Tika full version for text search and extraction and Radicale for contacts and calendar. They also recently updated to support EuroOffice.

While it has less features than NextCloud, it runs fine on a 4-core 8GB VPS, though it needs swap when starting for the first time or updating.

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- phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  IIRC, next cloud is a fork from own cloud who went closed source or something. This is almost a decade ago, so take that with a grain of salt, but I remember own cloud back then pulling some corporate crap, and then next cloud came into existence
  
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  - T4V0@lemmy.pt ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ahh yes, that’s correct, I jumbled them together lol.
    
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

DNS Domain Name Service/System

LXC Linux Containers

VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

nginx Popular HTTP server

[Thread #25 for this comm, first seen 23rd Jun 2026, 21:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Can you elaborate on what you didn’t like about what you’ve seen so far? I imagine most guides advise you to spin up an AIO instance of nextcloud in docker.

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- GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I can’t elaborate - it was a while ago. I think I did try the AIO and the consensus here then was that the AIO isn’t necessarily the best way to go. That’s why I’m asking before I try again - to see if there is any consensus. Apparently not.
  
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StrawberryPigtails@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I currently run the official Nextcloud-AIO. No issues once I got the reverse proxy figured out. That was a bit of a pain at the time. Caddy hadn’t yet become a popular choice for reverse proxies.

I will say that Nextcloud really wants dedicated hardware, not a VM, or proformance will suffer. Still useable but it tends to to be a bit slower. Can’t vouch for the office suite as I just don’t use it.

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- Nighed@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I tried the AIO docker build I never got the file sync working at an acceptable level. Would be using piss all resources and still only syncing a few files a second.
  
  Does installing bare metal make it faster, or is that not what you meant?
  
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- nexttech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  what does your name mean ? just curious :)
  
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  - StrawberryPigtails@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    It’s all good. The name came out a random name generator a while back. I liked the name enough that I started using it generally for my fediverse presence. No meaning beyond that.
    
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RanchBranch@anarchist.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I tried the AIO, the standalone community maintained one, and had problems with both of them. I could get them running, but the second ANYTHING changed, it would break. I kept having permissions issues, networking issues, and all sorts of random issues.

I ended up using the Linuxserver.io one and have had no issues since then.

I don’t know how much if it is a skill issue on my part, but I have had the Linuxserver.io running for a while now with no issues.

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vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

they don’t go out of their way to make the self hosted option easy

Just follow the docs docs.nextcloud.com/…/source_installation.html ? The manual install is a simple webserver + PHP-FPM + postgres setup

I have automated it with an ansible role [1], there’s nothing complicated about it, really.

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AcornTickler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I currently run it in Kubernetes but I just translated my existing Docker setup to it. I recommend setting up PostgreSQL and Redis if you can for the best performance, but SQLite and no-cache-approach is also fine for the beginning (you just run a single container).

That being said, I think Nextcloud is not very cloud-native. I set up Redis just so I can do rolling updates with zero downtime (filesystem locks are kept in Redis’ memory instead of the app’s own), but I still get some server errors for a brief moment during updates (for less than 10 seconds).

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ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Were you using the Nextcloud AIO? I’ve used every method of installing NC over the last decade+ and the AIO is painless to install and maintain.

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- GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I did try the AIO, or maybe read the docs and decided not to. Either way - it did not present as painless. Maybe your decade+ experience makes it hard to imagine what it’s like for someone coming to it fresh?
  
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  - ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well, perhaps, but it shouldn’t be any more complicated than starting up the docker stack.
    
    What are the specific problems? I might be able to help. You might also point an agent at the repo and ask it to stand it up, they’re pretty good at that sort of thing, just approve the commands it’s running to make sure it doesn’t shit the bed.
    
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mereo@piefed.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I gave up on having a stable Nextcloud instance. I went with Hetzner instead and got Onlyoffice working with it: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/

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Yeahboy92@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I use it in truenas with no issues. Might be worth it to spin up a vm and run it that way.

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
LXC	Linux Containers
VPS	Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
nginx	Popular HTTP server